I wouldn’t say that being a politician is never easy. However, it certainly isn’t always easy.
It isn’t always a choice between killing a fluffy kitten and not killing a fluffy kitten. Tough decisions have to be made and sometimes – often – whatever you decide, people die.
More money for road safety means less money for hospitals. More money for lifeguards means less money for the fire brigade.
In a perfect world, we could fund them all to capacity, but it isn’t – and we can’t.
Since its arrival on the scene, coronavirus has been presenting just such a dilemma for politicians.
The speed at which the virus spreads means that despite a low kill rate, hospitals are utterly overwhelmed. Northern Italy has been a case in point.
In the absence of a cure, or even a cheap and reliable test kit, the only effective way to prevent this, has been to enforce a lockdown of proportions never before seen.
By doing this, we can slow the virus to a rate which hospitals can cope with.
Unfortunately, there is a cost, and that cost is borne by the economy.
Now the Left, who are dominant in our education system, media and bureaucracy, have been telling us for years that “the economy” simply means obscene corporate profits, Gucci handbags and super-cars for the rich. That simply isn’t true.
If you want to understand the nation’s economy, simply write down your own budget and times it by about 25 million.
Both your personal economy – and the nation’s economy – consist mostly of things like housing, food, telecommunications, fuel, power, medical costs, education and other things which are difficult to do without.
Luxuries are a much smaller part of both the national economy and of most people’s personal economic situation.
The upshot of this, is that damaging the nation’s economy does not only come with a monetary price tag.
Inflicting serious damage on the economy will come with real human costs. Millions of people have lost their jobs due to the lockdown. Many of them will suffer serious consequences.
It is likely that some will suicide. Many will be left in situations that will impact seriously on their health and wellbeing.
Medical care will suffer. People may not be able to maintain their cars, or even afford good food. Homelessness is a serious health risk.
It will be much harder to quantify this damage than the total deaths from Covid19.
As the virus swept in, many politicians opted for various degrees of lockdown. The situation in Northern Italy was one which no one wanted to replicate.
Donald Trump has bucked this trend and has resisted calls for a shutdown of the economy, citing the risk this entails to the lives of Americans and others.
These are judgement calls. As the crisis unfolds, it will become clear who had the better strategy.
Right now, however, we don’t have the luxury of hindsight and I think it will be unfair to judge either of these positions too harshly in the future.
Italy has been experiencing in the region of 700 deaths per day recently. However, new figures show that the average age of death from Coronavirus in Italy is 78 years old.
A British study is suggesting that up to two thirds of Corvid19 fatalities will happen to people who wouldn’t have survived the year out even without the virus.
They are also suggesting that 20,000 deaths will be the likely outcome for the UK but admit that it could be much lower.
No one has any estimates for possible deaths related to the economic costs of the lockdowns. Mostly, these deaths will not be attributed to the economic pain.
There will be no TV cameras when they happen, and no simple test kit to show the real cause of the tragedy.
That makes it difficult for politicians to stick their necks out. If they do, then the media will be laying every Covid19 death at their feet – particularly if they can pin it on a Conservative.
As the experts get to grips with this pandemic, however, and test kits and even cures become available, we need to keep the pressure on to reduce the economic pain to a minimum. Up until now, I think most politicians have acted in good faith.
Exceptions, of course, have been the Chinese Communist Party and those US Democrats who shamelessly attempted to tack pork barrel projects on to genuine relief bills.
The actions of the CCP, however, are in a different league. The Chinese doctor who first blew the whistle was harassed and eventually died, supposedly of coronavirus.
Covid19 has a kill rate of less than 1% for young healthy people. That tells me that the odds are 100:1 that the good doctor died of the disease.
China has been the source of 3 deadly virus’ in recent times. This is surely not coincidence and things could be much worse next time.
Imagine if the next virus was as contagious as Covid19 but had the 30% kill rate of SARS. That would decimate the world’s population and destroy civilisation as we know it.
Current thinking is that these pandemics have been caused by one of two things.
It may be caused by Chinese proclivity for eating wild, and even endangered creatures.
Alternatively, it could have escaped (or been released) from a bio-warfare lab.
The world needs to stand up to China and demand a transparent end to these practices. If China refuses, it should be shunned. Removal of its status at the World Trade Organisation would be a good first step.
We also need to be examining Chinese influence and interference in our own democratic institutions as well as the blatant theft of civilian and military technologies.
This is a totalitarian Communist dictatorship which routinely engages in the most diabolical human rights abuses imaginable.
Having Chinse businessmen passing brown paper bags full of cash to our politicians should be considered to be high treason. Long custodial sentences for such behaviour should be meted out to deter such behaviour in the future.
And what about importing 1.2 million Chinese citizens and handing them Australian passports. Who took that decision and why?
I don’t remember being asked about it. Were the politicians involved in those decisions receiving backhanders?
We now have a Chinese voting block with huge political power making it extremely difficult for traditional Australians to enact peaceful democratic action against China.
Is it right that we should allow our nation to be put at risk by corrupt politicians like the infamous Al Grassby, the so called “Father of Multiculturalism” who was in the pay of the Calibrian Mafia
Our political and business leaders have been dining out on China’s largesse for decades now, whilst selling the rest of us (including the Tibetans, the Taiwanese, Falun Gong etc) down the river.
If this sounds like some kind of reactionary scare story (or even if it doesn’t), I recommend listening to the following interview. It is rather long, but well worth it.
The lady featured is the daughter of a former US Senator who spent time growing up in or around China. She had experience in particular, with the Tibetan exiles who had such a terrible time at the hands of the CCP.
At the time of the Chinese invasion, there were around six million Tibetans. Within a couple of decades, they will have pretty much ceased to exist as a people or a culture.
That is an ongoing genocide of six million people – think about that – six million. Despite this, no country is game to even mention it anymore.
The free countries of the world need to unite against Chinese bullying whilst we still can.
If China is not prepared to act as a responsible global citizen, then we should stop affording them the privileges of countries which do.
